Amazon is gunning to be the only way you make purchases or transactions. The company already has a great hold on the online side of payments, but it is now expanding into the real world with Amazon Local Register—the answer to Square and Paypal Here with a few competitive advantages.

Instead of dealing with banks and high setup fees, vendors and business owners can easily sign up to the new service on the Amazon Local Register site, then download the app (Google Play Store, Apple App Store, Amazon Appstore), buy the secure card reader for $10, and be done. They can then start swiping or manually keying credit and debit cards, with the transaction amount either automatically deposited into their banks the next day or available for use on Amazon.com immediately. The app will also allow them to manage discounts, tax, tips, and track their sales.

Local Register is starting with better fees than both of its competitors. If you sign up before October 31, 2014, you'll be able to benefit from a reduced 1.75% rate on swiped transactions through December 31, 2015, after which the rate will go back to 2.5%. Compared to Square's 2.75% and Paypal Here's 2.7%, you may be saving a lot if you expect to deal with high transaction volumes. The competitive pricing also applies to manually keyed card payments.

Local Register also comes with Amazon's live support should you need it. All in all, it seems like a viable and cheaper alternative to the current established services. The one limitation to keep in mind is that the app is only compatible with a handful of Android phones and tablets: the Samsung Galaxy S3, S4, S5, and the Kindle Fire HD, HDX 7", HDX 8.9". Oddly absent from that list is the Amazon Fire Phone and any other Android flagship or mid-range device you may own.

Comments

_artem_

sorry for offtopping just wanted to share how happy I am :))))) just got OnePlus One 64gb invitation from oneplus.net. Already paid, with express shipment (+4,99 EUR) it's 303,99 EUR. will be shipped from germany to germany, so it gonna take only couple of days to be delivered.

Chris

Good. PayPal sucks, and Google is taking way too long (if they even are aiming to get into this eventually). Bring it!

nhizzat

It would be good if it were compatible with more than 5 Android devices. The reduced rate is great but not if people can't even use the service.

Godspoken

It's weird that not even the Note series is supported. If you're going to back Samsung exclusively, why limit to only the S series, when Notes run almost the same software? I might be wrong, but I don't feel like it would take much more effort.

Doakie

Makes no sense when the Note series has a stylus to make signing easier.

Installed on nexus 5 running L because it said it was compatible. Open app and it says "Not Compatible with this device". 10/10 would install again /s

Brayden Reesor

When I go to the sign up page and try to sign in with my Amazon account, I get an error that says "This email address is already associated with an Amazon Payments account. Please provide a different email address and password." Uh. Why does it matter that it's already associated with an Amazon Payments account? (I use Amazon for ads in my Android applications.)

ccccc

The reason why it is not compatible with many android tablets is b/c unlike most phones, a lot of android tablets use a cheap audio jack. What I mean by that is these cc devices require a combo audio/voice jack, which allows not only audio but also acts like a mic as well. This is also referred to as a TRRS jack.

All apple devices have this type of jack, many android phones, but not many android tablets. To compound the issue, most tablet specs do NOT list if they have this specific TRRS jack or not. So you're basically stuck with the 'approved' list, unless you want to buy a tablet and hope for the best that it includes one.

mark

But that doesn't explain the issue, as it's not available for most Android phones either.

ccccc

more than likely it is just a validation issue with the phones. They have to test each and every one. I'm sure in the future they'll add more to the list.

With apple it is much easier for them to validate b/c there is a closed ecosystem, with few devices. But with android there are hundreds of different phones each with different hardware and various versions of android installed etc.

AFAIK the G2 and many Android phones released in the last year have a TRRS jack. I had to do a bit of research when seeing if the iRig Mic (the small one) would work on Android phones, and which ones. But yeah, you're right, it would explain that they simply haven't had the energy to test it with every phone out there.

thelionk

I dig that. Amazon is probably the best online store experience I've ever had on the internet. Site works well, products are cheap, reviews are awesome, payments are simple and seems to me to be some of the most secure of all. I welcome this over pay pal any day. And I trust Amazon more than Square I guess when it comes to security.